Sunday, February 11, 2007

I Ask You (Billy Collins)

What scene would I want to be enveloped inmore than this one,an ordinary night at the kitchen table,floral wallpaper pressing in,white cabinets full of glass,the telephone silent,a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to thinkabout all that is going on outside--leaves gathering in corners,lichen greening the high grey rocks,while over the dunes the world sails on,huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this tablethere is nothing that I need,not even a job that would allow me to row to work,or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,the clear ovals of a glass of water,a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,not to mention the odd snarling fishin a frame on the wall,and the way these three candles--each a different height--are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive meif I lower my head now and listento the short bass candle as he takes a solowhile my heartthrums under my shirt--frog at the edge of a pond--and my thoughts fly off to a provincemade of one enormous skyand about a million empty branches.